Leveraging Blog Criticism for Your Business

“All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.” Hilaire Belloc. Your business has escalated tremendously since you have been using social media. The greater your exposure, the more criticism you will receive. What do you do?

You should consider the criticism as an opportunity to do better. In an interesting way, your reputation as a business blogger is similar to the reputation of anyone who has gained some fame (or notoriety). The more content you share and the more people are willing to interact with you, the stronger your celebrity will be. However, along with the adoration comes some opinions that will be contrary to what you are offering. There will be occasions when people disagree with the information that you share in a particular blog post.

What to do with criticism

Criticism isn’t important (well, it is actually very important but it should not be avoided at all costs). What is important is what you do with the criticism and how you use it to improve upon what you offer and on how you conduct business. If a reader offers you constructive criticism on something that you have shared, you may be able to use that information to improve upon what you already have. Perhaps, the other person’s point of view offers some ideas that just never occurred to you before and it is getting you to look at your business in a fresh way.

Criticism can take a toll on you if you don’t approach it in the correct way. If the criticism is destructive, it may affect your self-esteem. It may lower your opinion of yourself and your business efforts. If you go to that place (emotionally), the quality of your work will not be as good as when you have a positive attitude. If your professional performance suffers, you are bound to make mistakes. If you do receive criticism, be as gracious as possible and ask the person who is handing out the criticism to offer you some solutions as well.

Have a reasonable response

As difficult as it is to accept criticism, you need to try to separate your emotions from the message that you are receiving. It is a very good idea to step back before you respond to the critic and say something like “I will consider what you have said. I appreciate the feedback.” If, on the other hand, the criticism does nothing to help improve what you are doing, you are well within your rights to reject it. You are not under any obligation to do everything that everyone tells you to do.  Of course, there are several different types of criticism, some constructive, some destructive, and some from people who love to criticize but don’t really have anything worthwhile to contribute. Those are the critics whom you don’t need to take seriously. The one thing that you really want to avoid is getting so caught up in cycles of criticism that you lose sight of what you are doing and why you are doing it. Stay focused on exactly why you went into business in the first place. Take whatever information and advice that you can from others and discard the rest.

Conclusion

It is important to try to see everything and everyone with whom you are associated for business as an opportunity to learn, grow, and prosper. When you are the recipient of criticism (which everyone in the universe experiences at times), do everything in your power to use it to your advantage and to the advantage of your business. There will definitely be times when you can learn from the critic and turn the advice into gold.

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